THANJAVUR: The Thanjavur District Cauvery Farmers’ Protection Association staged a protest in front the Income Tax office in Kumbakonam in Thanjavur district on Tuesday urging the Union government to release the compensation for crop loss for 2020 under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana.
The farmers led by the association’s Thanjavur district secretary S Vimalnathan said that farmers across the state paid several hundred crores of rupees towards crop insurance premium to the government through authorised insurance companies in November 2020 under the PM crop insurance scheme.
Crop cutting experiment (CCE) would be done one month before the harvest in a particular survey number identified by the government for each village to assess the crop loss in the presence of officials of the agriculture department, statistical department, survey department and insurance companies.
“The continuous rainfall in the last leg of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 left paddy crops inundated. Even though they completed the assessment, they were yet to declare the percentage of the crop loss in each village, which they should have done by the end of February,” said Vimalnathan.
The association said that information on the crop loss should be declared within a month of the assessment. “Even though the PM crop insurance scheme has been renamed as Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana in 2019, it has been done for namesake. “There is no transparency in the process till now. They have not declared the crop loss of the summer season. With the existing technology, they can calculate the crop loss in a day or two but they have taken so many months to release even the basic information,” said Vimalnathan.
As per the modified crop insurance scheme, insurance companies should pay interest in case of delay in disbursing the compensation.
